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Dive into the preprint for juicier bits, like how we deal with pesky opto-artifacts in the LFP,  relationships with endogenous phase-locking, and whether we even have to do this optical stimulation experiment ever again to determine phase-dependent excitability.

8/N

Thus, we establish a proof-of-principle for the applicability of a CTC-based  mechanism to striatum. 

7/N

We found that over a third (37.3%) of cells showed statistically significant phase-dependent excitability in at least one of the canonical frequency bands.

6/N

If the response in a  striatal neuron to a fixed stimulus varied by the LFP phase at which the stimulus was applied, that implies phase-dependent excitability in that neuron!

5/N

We applied optical stimulation to opsin-expressing striatal PV+ interneurons of awake, head-fixed, awake mice and asked if the magnitude of the response depended on the LFP phase of the stimulation.

4/N

However, coherence with upstream regions can translate to communication only if the downstream region (striatum) shows LFP phase-dependent fluctuations in excitability. It is not known if this requirement is met in striatum, so we did the experiment to investigate this - 

3/N

There is an exceedingly rich tapestry of studies showing behavior- and task-related LFP coherence between striatum and its inputs, suggesting a “communication-through-coherence” (CTC; Fries 2005, 2015) style mechanism to help striatum flexibly switch between its inputs. 

2/N

In a new pre-print (www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...), Eric Carmichael, Matt van der Meer and I find evidence that excitability in the mouse striatum varies according to the striatal LFP phase.

Read on to find out why we think it’s important - 🧵

1/N